VA: Video: Obama workers enable double-voting across state lines

A staff person working on the president’s re-election campaign helped an undercover journalist register to vote for Barack Obama in Florida despite the reporter’s expressed intention to vote twice in the hotly contested presidential race, video reviewed by Watchdog.org shows.

Casting more than one ballot in the same election is a violation of federal and state statutes. Experts said helping someone violate election law is also a crime.

The video, produced by independent journalist James O’Keefe, also shows Democratic activists helping register in New York an undercover reporter who says he’s going to vote twice — in Minnesota and in New York.

But the most arresting footage shows an Organizing for America staffer in the group’s Houston office providing a video journalist with an application to request a Florida mail-in ballot, even though the journalist has made it clear she intends also to vote in Texas.

O’Keefe, whose Project Veritas organization produced the video, identified the OFA staffer as Stephanie Caballero. Documents reviewed by Watchdog.org, and included in the video, indicate that Caballero is on the payroll of the Democratic National Committee.

When the undercover reporter declares that she intends to vote twice in the general election, Caballero laughs. She asks the reporter, “Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?”

“I have several friends who have done that and they said that it’s no problem so I figure . . . no one knows,” the undercover reporter says.

In response, the campaign worker seems to suggest that the legal problem of voting in two states is less important than the practical problem of what to say if you’re caught voting twice: “Come up with like, if anyone checks, say, ‘I don’t know.’”

“You can’t vote twice in a federal election,” said J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department elections lawyer and author of “Injustice,” a best-selling novel about voter fraud. “Obviously, this Stephanie Caballero doesn’t find it as offensive as I do that someone may be planning to vote twice.”

“A lot of people don’t realize that, in addition to everything that everyone knows about the National Voter Registration Act — that it allowed mail-in ballots and registration through vehicle licensing departments — the last part of the statute put in criminal penalties for fraudulent registration,” said von Spakovsky, who had not yet seen the video.

Chief among the crimes outlined in the code, said von Spakovsky, is the requirement that “you can only register someplace where your claim to be a permanent resident. Obviously, you can’t be a resident of two states.”

Von Spakovsky said helping a voter cast two ballots “would be a violation because you’re submitting fraudulent information in a registration form.”

He said prosecutors might also charge voter-registration workers in similar situations with more general violations — conspiracy, for instance, and aiding and abetting a criminal act.

But New Jersey Assemblyman DeclanO’Scanlon, R-Monmouth, cautioned, “It’s not a violation until the (second) vote is cast.”

“The worker should have said, ‘That’s illegal, you can only vote in one place. Which is it going to be?'” O’Scanlon said. New Jersey was one of the states where O’Keefe filmed his investigation.

Phillip Griffin, a consultant to political campaigns outside Virginia, said, “There are tens of thousands of people who are arguably residents of more than one state.”

But, to be legal, Griffin said people vote where they pay their taxes and have their cars registered.

Griffin believes there is a “concerted effort” to recruit dual voters — particularly among snowbird seniors and college students.

Until recently, Griffin said most of that registration effort was waged by Democrats.

The Republican parties in Colorado, Nevada, NorthCarolina and Virginia also fired Virginia-based SAC as those states neared their voter-registration deadlines.

Griffin said tracking down multiple registrations is nearly impossible in the frenetic weeks before a general election. But he applauded the state of Maine for culling new voter lists to identify any residents who were signed up in other states as well.

“They found more than 200 cases,” Griffin related. “The attorney general was proactive, sending letters saying if you don’t fix this, your registration will be considered illegal.”

The cases portrayed in the O’Keefe video are open to both federal and local prosecution, von Spakovsky said.

“The key is, and this is what you’ll see in the statute, if you double vote with a federal candidate on the ballot, you’ve violated federal law,” von Spakovsky said. “If the same ballot includes local candidates, that’s a violation of state law.”

Von Spakovsky pointed to a fraud case prosecuted locally after the 2008 election. In that incident, he said, “a number of Obama campaign workers were charged in Ohio after it was discovered they were residents of other states sent to Ohio to work on the campaign. They took advantage of easy registration laws there to vote in Ohio, even thoughthey were not residents of state.”

In their book “Who’s counting? How fraudsters and bureaucrats put your vote at risk,” von Spakovsky and co-author John Fund say the Ohio prosecution ended in admissions of guilt by the campaign workers.

Election observers say the problem of double-voting is greater in states like Florida, winter home to visitors with permanent residences in colder parts of the country.

One group found cross-referenced voter registration lists between Ohio and Florida to identify voters with matching full names, birth dates, addresses and voting histories.

Catherine Engelbrecht, president of True the Vote, a nonpartisan election-integrity organization, said her group found more than 19,000 Ohio voters claiming Florida mailing addresses. More than 6,390 people held voter registrations in both states.

True the Vote reportedly found 534 individuals casting ballots in federal elections in both Ohio and Florida. Engelbrecht said 34 cases were turned over to federal and state authorities for investigation last week. Another 32 cases involving dually registered New York and Florida voters also were submitted by TTV.

A recent Pew Center study estimated that 2.75 million Americans are registered in at least two jurisdictions. Some of that can be traced to individuals who have moved. The study did not give a party breakdown.

Richard Mroz, an election law attorney and a member of the New Jersey Republican National Lawyers Association, said local and state registrars have the technology to ensure the integrity of voting rolls.

“If there’s a pattern (of dual registrations), this is very troubling,” he said. “It’s ironic that we send people to be election observers in emerging democracies, but some officials here — particularly at the local level — just don’t take their job seriously.”

Kenric Ward is a veteran journalist who has worked on three Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers. A California native, he received a BA from UCLA (Political Science/Phi Beta Kappa) and holds an MBA. He reported and edited at the San Jose Mercury News and the Las Vegas Sun before joining Watchdog.org in 2012 as Virginia Bureau Chief.

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mthammer

So are they going to lock this lady up or what she broke the law , plus all the people she has helped before need to go to jail along wiith her boss and every person who let them do this . This how this liar Obama won last time, well after the testimony in Washington today about the Murder that was perpetrated by the State Department & the Obama Administration is outrageous and Obama needs to be impeached and deported out of this country.

jim

The northern snow birds are famous for this, all those michiganders are great at this as well as the folks from Wisconsin and Illinois that live in flordia.

deathtorepublitards!

All’s fair in love, war and politics. I hope everyone who votes twice for Obama gets away with it! Screw Romney and the rest of the republitards running and afterwards they can go away mad, just as long as they go away! HAHAHA!!!

http://www.facebook.com/chuck.cap.9 Chuck Cap

Pack up all yer shit and go
Don’t forget your mooching ho’
Bye-Bye Bammy.
To your home built by the sea
6,000 miles away from me,
… Bye-Bye, Bammy.
No one here can love or tolerate you,
And Larry Sinclair will not masturbate you.
Last time past the White House gates,
Leave the silver and the plates.
Bammy, bye-bye!

andi

How can you say that?!?!?!? Our forefathers fought and died so you could vote and it should be taken seriously. Those that vote twice should be prosecuted to the full extend of the law. I feel sorry for you, you sound like an unhappy person.

megarockradiostl

Just curious because Mitt Romney voted in two completely different states. In 2009 Mitt Romney moved to California. in 2010 he was supposedly living also in his son’s unfinished basement and voted in Massachusetts in 2010.

It’s quite interesting none of this was mentioned in this article. In fact with the laundry list of voter fraud articles above this isn’t even in the list even though it’s just as much voter fraud as what is mentioned in this article.

trollolololol its called an absentee ballot and he only voted in Massachusetts. Any other blantant lies? you know…. like how military personnel vote from Afghanistan.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_YJ4SAPJDI4CRIJKGZ6HDQHWT4Y Joel

ken, just a hello from our little paradise in ir county!! good to see you are still at the top of your game. hope you and family are well. jm

http://www.facebook.com/dpigme Daniel Mays

no diffrent than republicans tring to keep people from voting
sounds like b.s. to me

http://www.facebook.com/dpigme Daniel Mays

money manipulator romney show your tax returns

http://www.facebook.com/dale.putman Dale Putman

You must be on Wellfare & food stamps.

Cincinatus300

When Obama loses the election by a decisive margin the DOJ will be instrumental in filling suits against the very states they already filed suits to keep voter ID from being executed. This administration will be a nightmare beyond the past 4, excuse me, 5 years of constant in your face campaigning. It won’t need us to like them anymore. They’ll do anything and everything that we have never seen a president and his administration ever do to this country.

What scares me is that he just might win, with outright, in your face fraud, and there won’t be a thing we can do about it.

Cincinatus300

obama and his cohorts all need to be tried for sabotage, negligence of duty, and breach of promise.

Cincinatus300

My nephew worked as a field supervisor in Florida, registering voters. I wonder how many times he registered himself? He lived in California before going to Florida, he was registered in California too! Then, he moved to Minnesota for about a year and followed his, also Obama campaign worker girlfriend, to DC. I’m sure he’s registered to vote there too.

This tactic was proliferate in 2008, it has procreated exponentially because of the stupid, brain washed college nitwits, who think they know more than the rest of us.

They forget who they are, they are Americans. This president has a distain for America, her citizens, and everything we stand for. So they, those smarty, Sponge Bob Squarepants, college kids, don’t mean anything to him but a population that must be controlled and decreased.

Cincinatus300

My nephew was a field supervisor for the Obama campaign in Florida during the 2008 election. He was, may still be, registered to vote in California before leaving for Florida. As field supervisor, I wonder how many permutations of his name has been registered in Florida!

After the 2008 election, he went back to Caalifornia, moved to Minnesota, where he lived long enough to register there. Then, he followed his girlfriend, who also was a 2008 campaign worker, to DC, where I am absolutely sure he has registered himself too.

I get to cast a ballot once, how is it that the DOJ will not ensure, “one person, one vote?”. Remember when bIacks worked so hard just to vote? Now there is a system in place, seemingly supported by the White House, that encourages multiple ballots for favored sectors of the population.

The new motto appears to be, “Vote as many times, in as many places as you can, per man!”

http://www.facebook.com/jeffwebster58 Jeff Webster

How are the Republicans trying to keep people from voting?

http://www.facebook.com/jeffwebster58 Jeff Webster

Obummer show us your college transcripts and your REAL birth certificate.

Aleen Realmuto

I am glad I found this site..thank you!!

Aleen Realmuto

I hear that

Franseenit

The Franklin Center and Watchdog.org has no credibility whatsoever. Every one of these instances have been proved to be set-ups and you still cling to these lies – shame on every one of you. You yourselves perpetrate more fraud than has ever been officially uncovered and proven. You are all a sad lot.

Texasfor56

We now have a case of a Republican candidate for office who has been voting in Texas and sending absentee votes to Pennsylvania!